workshop at Dutch school

Spring has come in finally. There are more sunny days than cloudy days and colorful flowers are seen in every park. It always surprises me how well maintained parks in the Netherlands are. Early spring flowers like Narcissus and Crocus are neatly planted in line, circle or sometimes in letters.

Amstel park is one of such neat Dutch parks in Amsterdam. Bicyclists are not allowed to ride through the park, no rubbish can be seen, the lawn is always freshly mowed. This park was built in 1972 for the flower expo “Floriade, which is why you can still see pavilions of flower names in the park. Het Glazenhuis is one of the used pavilions in the park. It is literally a glass house in which Stichting ZET organizes monthly exhibitions.

As I made a post before, Stichiting ZET asked me to work with mentally challenged children (in Dutch it is expressed handicapped children). I made a workshop plan to introduce Japanese spring custom and Japanese culture. So the final outcome of my workshop will be shown in Het Glazenhuis.

So far the workshop has been successful; in the first time we made flower pots in clay. In the second time we went out to pick up moss and twigs in the park. Then we built small objects with lego blocks.

The success of the workshop might be the spring power. When we went out for park we had a lot of fun with fishing bicycles parts in a pond, digging worms, taking pictures of posing children and so on. After park back in a class they were so concentrated in building lego. If the weather was cold and cloudy we wouldn’t have had such energy!